


Toph and Sokka

by TheOneKrafter



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Children, F/F, F/M, One Shot, Unplanned Pregnancy, lying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 06:49:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18566155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOneKrafter/pseuds/TheOneKrafter
Summary: Toph Beifong and Sokka of the Water Tribe have a complicated relationship. They made it work.(In other words, Toph’s kids are Sokka’s, and everyone else learns it too late.)





	Toph and Sokka

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve always had a fondness for Tokka, and how complicated the kids thing would be if it’s true. Enjoy.

She looks at her children, and something on her chest _aches_.

They call him uncle Sokka and he and her share a look. It's a sad one, one that talks about drunken nights with trembling hands from a war that's been over for years now. Drunken nights that turned into quiet mornings with tea and wondering.

Toph is not a woman to let herself be tied down. Sokka is still chasing a painted woman who trains fighters on a far off island.

“Why don't I have a daddy?”

That question cut Toph Beifong more than she thought much could. She'd only lifted an eyebrow at her eldest daughter and hummed something about idiots, but inside it still hurt.

She started falling the moment he saved her from falling, ironically enough. Kids fighting to stop a war older than their grandparents, almost _dying_ for it. That didn't hit them until Aang had already taken Lord Fire-face’s bending and they felt with the aftermath.

Toph mildly wonders what would have happened if she'd just kept her footing, where they'd be now, but it's fine.

“Uncle Sokka, puns are gross.”

* * *

 

Teenagers are idiots, Sokka decides when he's a little older and a little wiser.

He was a idiot for love, a fool for romance and he wanted to just get the girl without them turning into the _moon_ or-

Or breaking up with him because they live too far apart.

Suki.

The name of the girl, _woman_ he’s practically been crushing on before his first chin hairs. Fierce and beautiful, and uninterested in moving to Republic city. He understands. It's logical when she wants to train the next, larger, generation of Kyoshi warriors, but he still _wishes_.

**_Toph._ **

Blind, blunt, and someone he's literally grown up with. She's seen, _ha_ , him at his worst and his best. They've saved each other more than once back when they ran around with Aang when they were kids, and after.

That was the problem, wasn't it?

They weren't kids anymore.

_“Uncle Sokka!”_

Like a knife.

It's a open secret among the Gaang who Toph’s girls came from. The only one who doesn't know is Suki, with her so far off.

He remembers the last time the whole Gaang had time to get drunk together at Aang’s house, _read mansion_. Zuko worrying and brooding over his work as Firelord, Aang passed out face down on the table while Katara and Toph talk heatedly about what might be the best way to knock someone out.

Before that though, they talked about their slowly building families.

“I'm not saying.” Is what Toph says when Katara asks about the slow growing baby bump matching her own. Sokka knows exactly who made the kid, he's sitting right here.

Zuko looks straight at Sokka. “That’s rough buddy.” Is what comes out of his mouth after only one shot of Sake. He's perceptive when it counts, and Sokka knows that the people in this room all know each other more intimately than anyone else in the world could possibly understand. Zuko only took the mantle of Firelord officially a year after his crowning, all of them traveling together for a little while longer trying to fix what they could while they were still together.

“We support you, though I don't really think we need to say it.” Aang says next to Katara, both of them have a hand on Katara’s stomach while they say it.

Sokka aches for that, for being a couple and how picturesque his sister and _practically_ brother are.

A small hand touches his under the table, and he finds that whatever happens, he can deal. For Toph, and their kid.

* * *

 

Toph trains her daughters hard because she is scared.

She hates admitting fear, she hates the weakness, but when she looks at them she sees _herself_ staring back up at her with Sokka’s smarts and so much to prove to the world.

She doesn't want them to get hurt, is all she can think imagining faint burn scars on her feet and a fire nation ship with a _terrifying_ fall. She wants them to be _ready_ . She doesn't know what for, but she feels it in her bones and the earth that they’ll face challenges like she and her family did. She will _not_ let them die in the heat of it. No more Jets is a sentiment all of the Gaang share.

She sees the resentment grow and she lets it. She's okay with them not liking her if they’re ready.

* * *

 

“You need sleep.” Is what Sokka says quietly, sitting on the couch with a silently pained Toph. There are bags marring her porcelain skin and making her look as old as the Gaang all feel.

“They hate me.” Toph says back, quiet and raw. She doesn't like her parents, hell, if Aang hadn't made her she never would've went back after what her mother did, but-

“They don't, To. They’re your kids.” Sokka tells her, squeezing her hand. She only laughs hollowly.

“I know they’re my kids, that's how I know they hate me. I feel all that world lust in their tiny bodies and- and-”

She rubs one of her feet with the other. Sokka knows she doesn't blame Zuko, but that helplessness scared her almost as bad as the ship.

“They would've been better off with you. I don't deserve them. I’ll never be a mom like Katara and I can't fix this-”

“Toph. Stop it.”

She wrenches herself from Sokka’s grip and looks at him with those unseeing eyes, standing and her fists shaking.

“ _No._ Twinkle-toes and Katara _are_ better than us. I _fucking_ suck at being a mother just as much as I'd be a wife, I'm useless at anything that doesn't mean throwing punches _damnit!_ ” She yells at him, honest to the spirits _crying_ and sobbing, finishing by making all the earth and metal in his house shake. Toph crumples to her knees with her face in her hands.

Sokka hurried down next to her and pulls her smaller body into his warm hold, tired and sad and wishing that things had been a little different.

They don't say I love you, but they know it anyways.

* * *

 

Suki asks him to move to Kyoshi, after everything in Republic has settled and the government can probably handle itself.

They’re older now, in their early forties. They aren’t lovestruck kids anymore fumbling in tents and hoping to the spirits that the other doesn’t get captured. They aren’t twenty year olds so focused on their dreams either.

He says no.

She just nods. They’re over for good then, still friends, but not what they were. Never again. There’s no yelling, just a calm conversation, a hug, and the next day she’s gone again.

A part of him aches. Another stares at the moon. The last wishes for cutting sarcasm and small, calloused hands.

* * *

 

At this point, Toph could probably smash this whole large city in three moves, one if she wants a challenge. It’s not just her, Katara tells her sometimes that she can just feel the ocean. The pushes and pulls and _knows_ she could use it. Zuko once set a wing of his palace to ashes in one sweep.

That- probably isn’t normal for most benders. Maybe it’s because Twinkle toes has a habit of attracting the most interesting and dangerous people possible just existing. Even Sokka is dangerous in a ‘ _I could destroy you stupidly easily in a battle_ ’ way, the weird strategizing genius.

It’s just a little weird sometimes, feeling someone walking miles and miles away if she happens to focus on it.

“What do you expect from the woman who founded metal bending?” Sokka says, waving a hand at her, grinning. Toph punches his shoulder, and smirks when he yelps.

“Keep joking funny guy, I know you keep losing Pai Sho to Lin on purpose.”

* * *

 

A stroke.

Of all the things to get one of the Avatar’s circle of friends, that’s exactly what did.

He wasn’t even _fucking old._ Fifty-seven is fucking tiny spirits damning _fuck._

Princess tried to comfort her, but she’s already falling at the seams herself. Twinkle Toes is pacing and pacing and-

“ _Fuck. Stop that Twinkle toes before I_ -” She stomps and the tile under their feet holds the Avatar in place and she can’t bring herself to care because oh god he’s a vegetable. He’s crippled for life in one side and he had the _balls_ to make her his beneficiary. Wanted her to make a choice like this if it ever came up to it in his will.

They’re all still so young. He can’t just go, she hasn't even told their kids he’s their _very_ willing sperm donor. She hasn’t had lunch with him like they were planning on Saturday, and they definitely haven’t finished talking about that stupid law he was talking about yesterday over the phone.

She wants to rip this stupid city to tiny pieces for not having figured out how to fix this kind of damage yet. What’s the use in phones if the person you want to talk to can barely open his eyes?

She stands up and walks. Toph walks and walks until she’s on the roof and can shout and send small rocks into a mountain miles away.

* * *

 

She pulls the plug.

She handles her work, puts her best man at the head of the police and gets the hell out of dodge. Toph ‘sees’ what became of so many places she went to back when she was just a kid. She visits other people from the war, even stupid Azula and Tai Lee on Ember Island, with their _stupid_ domestic thing they’ve got going on.

Zuko’s spawn are doing much better than he and his sister did, at least. She shares a few bottles with him, thinking and reminiscing and aching over Sokka’s loss and bad parents.

“I wonder what we’d have done if one of us died back then.” He wonders out loud to her, quietly in a small bar by the sea.

Badly, is what Toph thinks. Aang when under control of his avatar state is destructive.

“I wonder if he’s off with his moon princess.” Is what Toph says instead, suddenly grimacing and wishing she hadn’t. Maybe _she_ would’ve been able to fix him with her magic  spirit water.

Maybe he’s better off with Yui than Toph. She still doesn’t have the balls to tell her children their father is dead. Recently dead. What good would it do anyways? They’d just hate her more for not letting them spend time with him sooner.

“I’m pretty sure he’d rather be down here with you, Toph.” Zuko grumbles back, downing another shot of rice wine and rubbing at his scar.

Maybe. They wouldn’t ever know now.

She sees the two guys left of her illegal wrestling ring, Boulder and the fire nation guy. The rest are either dead or missing.

Boulder tries to pull her into a hug, shouting about his old rival. She traps him in two steps. The old man laughs while his grandkids watch on in concern.

“I’m Yun, Blind Bandit. Or should I say Lady Beifong?”

“Toph, Boulder. I’ve kicked your ass enough times for you to earn it.”

He got married, had six kids, and apparently knits.

Fire guy had been a little harder, but she’d found him two towns away from her parents’. He’d taken one look at her, paled, and tried to go back to his Pai Sho game.

She bullied him into talking about what he’d been up to. He grumbled something about anonymous tips to the rebellion until the war had ended, and owning a dojo for people without bending.

Toph finds that traveling helps her not think about the fact that Sokka is dead. That she hates being helpless. That her kids hate her. That she wants to crunch a mountain with just her hands and fists.

* * *

 

She ends up going to the swamp. The one Aang said showed her to him in a freaky vision.

It just feels humid and wet- but who’s she to judge a hundred and something year old man?

Then she starts hearing his laugh. Sokka is only steps away with his back turned and how is that possible she **_felt_ ** _his heart go dead-_

When she grabs for him, all she gets is vines.

Toph decides she’d going to figure out what the fuck is up with this swamp if it’s the last thing she does.

* * *

 

It’s not until the war hero Toph Beifong dies, that her and Sokka’s personal journals are released to next to kin. That, in her will, being Zuko, Katara, and her children. No exceptions.

Toph’s are sarcastic at first, complaining about Braille and having to type about feelings, and then she starts actually writing about her experiences. Her fears.

Sokka.

Sokka has journals going back to when the Gaang was hiding out in the Fire Nation, years and years of information on the personal lives and feelings of the Avatar’s inner circle.

Korra is invited to see them, if only to get a better understanding of her previous incarnation’s life. She doesn’t until after the big explosion on Lin and Suyin’s father reveal happens, having been off in the spirit world for a long while.

To Lin, her mother’s sudden leaving after Sokka’s death suddenly made so much more sense and she wonders if Kanto was ever really a person. Suyin aches for a father she never realized was right there in front of her. Zuko just smiles a little sadly, sharing a look with Katara.

“Why didn’t they tell us?” Suyin says mournfully, eyes shut tight as she leans over a journal with her head bowed.

Zuko speaks.

“Sokka was in a long distance relationship with Suki at the time, and Toph wasn’t one for saying much at all on who she took a liking to. We only realized after they’d been lovey Dovey during her pregnancy with you, Lin.” He says, an arm around a mournful looking Katara.

“She had so much time though! They both did! It doesn’t make _sense_.” Lin says scathingly.

“Their relationship was complicated, Lin. Enough so that even they didn’t understand it. They thought it was easier to hide.” Katara says quietly, looking more and more like the old woman she is now. Somewhere in the back of Zuko’s mind he sees the girl she’d been so long ago, a raw wound opened because they’re all that’s left of the Gaang. Who will be the last, he wonders? He doesn’t want to leave her here alone, she’s strong, but he knows she’s been tired since Aang died. Moreso now that Toph is gone. Maybe they should go have another adventure. He and Toph didn’t get around to that until much later in their lives.

Then again, they’ve gotten a bit old for that. Though his Uncle had made it clear that age didn’t make you any less dangerous. He wonders how easily she could level an island, maybe even part of a continent of prompted.

“I miss her.” Suyin says, wiping tears out of her eyes.

The last members of the Gaang do too.

Korra feels a loss too, staring at the journals and the people who were her family in her last life. Will her friends be like that one day? She doubts that they’re as close as the veterans, even with all the danger they’ve been thrown in.

* * *

 

The Gaang meets again, in the spirit world.

“Took you long enough, Sparky, Princess.” A painfully young Toph says beside an equally young Sokka. It makes sense for them all to look like this, it was the most climactic part of their lives.

“ _Sokka_.” A fourteen year old Katara whispers tearfully, and she sprints over to her sibling grabbing him and holding him close. “I missed you. Everyday.”

Zuko finds himself wiping a few tears away too. He missed this, missed this so much.

“How’s Aang 2.0 doing?” Toph asks, unseeing eyes focused on Zuko.

“Married and alive.” Zuko says simply, before pulling her into a hug.

“ _Bummer_.” Toph says sarcastically, but she holds him too.

“We’ve gotta do some of this reincarnation shit as soon as she kicks it though, watching the kids handle everything this time was a pain.” Toph says as Zuko releases her.

“ _Toph._ ” Katara hisses, falling into a much more comfortable, younger part of herself.

“Oh shut it princess, I didn’t mean soon.” The younger girl says, but there’s a grin on her face while she does.

“She’s a good girl, stop bullying her where she can’t see.” Katara nags.

“Bullying? I’m just excited to see Aang 3.0, the Earthbender edition!”

The Gaang is reunited save one member, but they can wait. They’ve all done tons of it already.


End file.
